coffee roasters | Coffee, It's a Helluva Drug

one more spring trip

As I’ve posted recently, I’ve been very lucky this spring to travel to Arizona for baseball spring training, and to Portugal with my family. Last week I enjoyed one more very special trip, driving in the US south, and of course visited some coffee places. I neglected to do my usual rounds of picture taking, but we may be better off without them.

I’ve been a big fan of Red Rooster Coffee for a while now, enjoying their coffee at some of the best DC-area cafés. Their coffee’s flavor profiles are often bold, but offer layers of complexity that make them more interesting that just smacking you in the face. I’ve wanted to visit their café and roastery, but Floyd, VA is a bit far from where I live, I’m not a bluegrass fan so a visit to Floydfest isn’t in the cards, and Floyd hasn’t been on the way to places I’ve gone before. This trip gave me the opportunity to route myself in their direction, so I built a stop into the itinerary.

Phoenix part 4 (fin)

fourth & final in a series of four posts

Let’s wrap up the Phoenix field report. Two cafés left to cover.

WINDOW COFFEE BAR (Melrose)

*where’s Frank? Dino? Sammy? Joey Bishop?*

from the second you pull up to the Royale complex, which houses this outlet of Window Coffee Bar, you’re awash in 60’s Vegas cool and invited to find your inner rat packer as you relax in a bright metal chair on the astroturfed courtyard
the café is bright and colorful, and it took a lot of willpower not to take home one of their really cool mugs
great coffee, teas (I went back for pictures and got a really good iced herbal tea), and pastries – another fine pop tart, this one raspberry and pear

*concrete floor, check; cool art, check; light wood…….*

*I’ll take one of the mugs from the bottom shelf, please*

*pardon me, sir, do you know Angie Dickinson?*

happy coffeepalooza ’23

This was quite the weekend for coffee obsessives in the nation’s capital. Friday was National Coffee Day, Sunday was International Coffee Day, and these critically important holidays bookended Saturday’s first annual DC Coffee Festival. Held at Dock 5 in Union Market, the event sold out in advance for both sessions.

The hall was filled with roasters and cafe operators, plus a few different coffee-related businesses and a couple food purveyors. Thankfully the good people from Topo Chico were giving away free samples of cold soda water, as things got a little sweaty in a packed hall on a humid day.

the ‘other’ Portland

I’ve certainly posted more than my share about the joys of Portland, Oregon. Here’s more Portland travel news, but this time from the Portland that’s not found on the upper left of the map of the United States.

Our family went to Maine recently for a short vacation, which included an overnight in Portland. What a terrific small city! Interesting neighborhoods, nice waterfront, lots of great food and drink options, and what the kids these days call good vibes. For coffee, the city punches well above its weight with a concentration of excellent roasters and cafés. I was able to squeeze in visits to three cafés, two operated by roasters and one independent shop serving beans from yet another well-reputed local roaster.

We stayed at an Airbnb in the East Bayside neighborhood, and the location could not have been more perfect. Within easy walking distance were cafés, bars, brewpubs, and interesting food. We weren’t there long enough to even scratch the surface, but experienced a few places and all were all top-notch.

First stop was Coffee by Design‘s Diamond Street roastery and café. A large industrial space made warm by colorful paint, art, and wood, with a big, round coffee bar in the middle. The staff could not have been friendlier or more thoughtful, the coffee was excellent, and there was a good-sized crowd of patrons for a weekday afternoon.

Game changer

Sorry I’ve been silent for so long. No special reason, just been busy.

On a recent trip to Oregon I was visiting one of Coava Coffee‘s Portland cafés, and while waiting for my drink I noticed a display of instant coffee. I’ve been aware of the effort the last few years to make high quality coffee available in instant form, but hadn’t tried it yet. Probably too biased against freeze dried coffee, including memories of having Nescafé as the only option far too often. Figured I’d give it a try, so I grabbed a box.

Verdict: spectacular. Coava and their partner Swift Cup Coffee have managed to keep the great flavor you expect from craft coffee. It’s also the easiest way to get your fix, even more so than the single serve coffee bags from Counter Culture and others – no need for steeping time, no bag to dispose of. A real game changer if, like me, you don’t have many (or any) good coffee options near work. They also make decaf offerings, for all you latent Sanka fans out there.

Swift Cup, from Lancaster, PA, produces instant coffee for a number of specialty roasters in addition to Coava, including their own label. So if you see instant from a roaster you trust, shake off any freeze dried crystals prejudices and give it a try. You can also buy Coava’s instant from their website, sold in boxes of six for $16-$17, or in bulk pouches which deliver 25 servings for around $40.

the easiest way to sample great coffee

Not too long ago a friend turned me on to a text subscription service for buying wine. You sign up with your credit card, address and phone number, and every day you get a text offering a quality wine for sale at a steep discount. If you want to buy it, all you do is answer the text with the number of bottles you want. As in sending a text that only says “2.” No minimum purchases, you can just lurk and never order or go nuts building a wine library as you go broke. I’ve enjoyed it, even if at times I’ve gotten a little side eye at home for buying too often. In my defense, whomever is writing the daily texts is one of the finest marketing writers I’ve ever encountered, the fact I’m not buying every day is an achievement.

It turns out that Fellow Products, the retailer of achingly beautiful consumer coffee equipment, has started a very similar service for coffee beans. Fellow Drops is a very similar no-commitment coffee subscription service run by text message. The difference from the wine text service is the tempting messages come once a week, rather than daily, and while the writing is still enticing it may not take the same strength of will as the wine texts to avoid ordering every single time.

I’ve ordered a few times, and been very pleased with the results. The offerings are always interesting and focus on high-quality growers and roasters, with attention paid to different coffee varietals and unique finishing processes. You’ll need a grinder or access to one, as it’s whole beans only.

I’ve covered earlier my first order, which was from Onyx Labs. Among the other orders I’ve made was one of three different varietals from Red Rooster Coffee, a notable roaster based in Floyd, VA that I’ve been meaning to try. So far every order has been absolutely exceptional.

So if you like trying new and exciting coffee at home, and the use of the term ‘curated’ outside of a museum doesn’t bother you, give it a shot. It’s great access to rarely available quality beans without having to hunt them down and check the roast date on the bag. You can sign up at the Fellow Products website.

The Matty Macchiato 4th Annual Holiday Gift Guide

This year I’m taking a slightly different approach to my previous gift guides (2018, 2019, and 2020). While some of the models may have been replaced by newer iterations, pretty much all the recommended items in those posts would still make for great gifts. This version, however, is for those of you who just thought, “Oh $#%@!, it’s five days to Christmas and I haven’t ~~written my annual gift guide post~~ finished my shopping yet!”

So if the calendar is not your friend, supply chain worries are making you pull out your hair, and you’ve got a coffee lover in your life, here are a few suggestions.

This Isn’t a Box, This Is So Much More Than a Box

I recently made my first order with Fellow Drops, the text-to-order coffee service from the company that makes the most achingly beautiful coffee paraphernalia. It was a sampler set of four coffees from Onyx Coffee Lab, one of my favorite roasters.

Not too much longer, a small box, no more than a 5″ x 5″ x 5″ cube, arrived at my home. My initial reaction was disappointment, because clearly four bags of coffee couldn’t fit inside such a wee little box. My second reaction was befuddlement, as it took a while to figure out how to open the sucker. Once I did, ohhhhhhhhh my, was I in for a delightful surprise.

Brooklyn’s Yemeni-Americans reclaiming coffee

There’s a great article in today’s New York Times about young Yemeni-Americans in Brooklyn building coffee businesses featuring beans grown in Yemen. It’s an enjoyable read and about a lot more than coffee.

trying to catch up

Between being off my feet for a while and having to get my grinder serviced, I hadn’t made espresso at home for about a month and a half. Finally got a chance yesterday, and I was a little surprised that I had to work to remember some of the steps. But my first effort I thought was decent as far as the milk art goes.

It was also my first time making beans from Tim Wendelboe, a Norwegian roaster who supplies a lot of fine coffee shops across Europe. I was very impressed, the flavor was smooth and balanced, without the burnt taste of overroasting or the sourness that can accompany some Third Wave coffees. The beans were a two-bean blend from the Finca Tamana plantation in Colombia, you can read the whole story of Wendelboe’s relationship with the farm here.

The pricing wasn’t terrible for being shipped from Norway, though the bag only contained 250 grams of beans. Still worth it.